Mizu ni Naritai
by Ryu Niiyama
Summary: What must one risk to heal the wounds life has wrought?


Mizu ni Naritai

By Ryu Niiyama

Disclaimer: I don't own em'

Rated PG

AN: Another one of my 'I hate life stories'…perhaps I should stick with this genre and feed my depression…. Taiki/Ami folks….

* * *

It has been two years and still after all this time she is still the one I seek… and it still shocks me to no end that I feel this way, and how deeply. I don't even know why I'm here… I pause and frown for a moment realizing that I'm not clarifying my thoughts properly- it seems to be an after effect from my time here…but I digress. I know why I've returned to earth, as much as I've tried to run from it, tried to pretend that I didn't need…anyone, I find myself in this human city on this human planet, once again occupying a form I was never meant to posses…hoping that I can be something…anything to her. 

Once again, I digress.

I sigh softly and resume walking up the staircase of the abandoned building I've found myself in, and I find myself wondering at Yaten's final words to me before I left. _"Trust me, you'll find her. There is something…different…about the way your star shines now… it's not just you anymore, it's apart of her as well" _

…I'm in an condemned building that looks like it could come down on my head at any moment… leave it to me to trust an empath who is almost abhorrent of her own power… Yet even as I think this I can't force myself to leave. I feel a sense of urgency pulling at me unlike anything I've ever felt before. It tugs constantly, impatiently, and I find myself quickening my pace. It is insistent now; screeching within my mind like banshee, and I can't help but wonder what can I be so tethered to…what can be so important that it pulls at me with an almost physical force. I blink as my mind considers the implications….

What if Yaten was right?

…Oh Hell…

I surge forward as a woman (despite my current form I still see myself as such) possessed, my long legs taking the stairs in threes, and for once I was grateful for the extra two inches in height I'd gained since I'd left Earth, no longer cursing it for making me stand out even more. So intent am I on my goal, that I barely notice my trembling hand as I reach out to the doorknob of the exit to the roof, so focused that I don't even feel the exertion it takes to open the weathered (and as I would later find out slightly barricaded) door.

The cold slams into my body with both the force of an enemy's hatred and the passion of a long lost lover, serving to disorient me as my frantic mauve eyes seek what drew me here in the first place.

"…mizu ni naritai…"

I hear it, agonizing seconds before I see its source, I hear that voice carried by the cold and unforgiving wind, before my whole world shatters around me. As if my pain reached out, with tangible limbs, I catch the barest glimpse of shocked and pained azure before the nothingness of the starlit sky. I don't know what I thought in that moment, I don't know what I felt as shock descended upon my system like a cocoon of cotton, my thought processes…everything going numb….

I saw, rather than felt my body spur into motion, I hadn't taken two steps before the power of Maker roared through my body, more powerful than I'd ever felt it…and without my bidding. I hadn't call for the power of my fallen planet… in fact it was as if it was wrenched out of my very soul, called by me-but not me…called by my other half. I wasted no time, moving faster than I'd ever had before… knowing that if I failed in this…there would be nothing left. Of myself, and perhaps of the world around me…because if I failed I would absolutely self destruct.

I dove off the edge, streamlining my body as much as possible even as I reached out to fading blue. I willed my body to fall faster, faster, until I looped an arm around a waist that had become entirely too thin, and reached out my other arm to grab at a decrepit window sill. I felt my left arm socket burn like wildfire as I sought to slow our decent, and my momentary relief faded into shear horror as I felt the sill give way and our bodies begin to once again plummet towards the waters below.

The body in my grip went slack, becoming dead weight as if to make haste of the death I was trying to prevent… and to add my own if I didn't abandon her. I hear a cry, so guttural, so animalistic and desperate it takes me a moment to register that the sound is coming from my own throat. Even more to my surprise, the waters below are slowing in their rise to meet us… or are we the ones rising?

I hear a rustle of feathers and the muscular beat of strong appendages and I realize belatedly that my wings… the wings of a Hoshi no Senshi have sprung from my back…again with out my permission. I gather the now struggling body to me in a bridal carry and climb higher, seeking refuge. There is an empty park nearby and it seems to be a better alternative than retuning to the abandoned building.

The moment my feet touch the ground, I feel a violent shove against my chest, far stronger than I'd expected and my precious burden attempts to flee. She takes a few steps and I know with uncanny certainty that if I lose her now, I will lose her for all eternity. Quickly, I sprint forward and snag her arm, tugging her with as much gentle force as my currently panicked mind can allow so that she will stumble into my arms. I hold her at arms length and shake her violently and I hear my voice, now devoid of all of my usual calm and aloof disdain as I shriek at her in horrified shock.

"WHAT THE HELL DID YOU THINK YOU WERE DOING!"

I don't even give her time to answer as I pull her smaller frame into my arms, my wings cloaking about us both. I hunch over her diminutive form and unabashedly cry into her now slightly longer and unkept hair. She tries to resist me for a few moments, before she goes lax in my embrace, not that anything short of death would have forced me to release her.

"…mizu ni naritai…" I hear her mumble into my cleavage, where my urgent embraced has somewhat forced her head. I pull away slightly and open my mouth to question this broken woman when a coldness; colder that the bleakest parts of the universe stabs into my soul.

'I want…I need to disappear…' It takes a few moments for me to realize that the thought was not my own… though I have echoed the sentiment on many occasions…and that more importantly neither of us had spoken aloud. I felt my body jerk slightly and a blinding light consume us both, and I tightened my hold, hoping to shield her. When I blinked my eyes open it was not the moonlit trees of the park that greeted me, instead I found utter chaos. It was like a beautiful world that had been shattered and ravaged, then pieced back together but never healed, only for it to unravel far worse than it had been before. I looked around in shock, realizing that I was alone.

"Where...Ami?" So great was my fear that I'd forgotten the polite nuances of her language and culture…and I spoke her name as if it had flowed from my lips many times…and indeed it had, just not in her presence. I stepped forward, my footing unsteady in this broken world, but I refused to abandon her …not now, and never again. It took an undetermined amount of time but I came to the heart of this place and found her again, she was seated in a fetal position, her back facing me.

"Ami?" I questioned again as I strode forward and put my hand on her shoulder. I felt that same bleak coldness fill me once more. 'I want to disappear' Urgently, I moved to kneel in front of her, my mind absently noting that she was naked and so was I. "Ami? Why do you want to disappear?"

'I have no purpose' her voice booms out, not from her body but from our very surroundings.

"What do you mean you serve no purpose? Why are you saying these things? Ami, where are we?" My inquiry is suddenly halted as innocent, pained blue eyes finally open and Ami looks directly at me. She holds out her hands, and I notice that she is clutching something, but her gaze draws me back to her face.

'…It's broken…'

The words are spoken by her directly but in a voice that sounds nothing like her…so child like and battered. I look down to her cupped hands and I see that object she is holding is a shattered multifaceted crystal. "Stars above…" I whisper, as I realize where we are and what she is holding….but it can not be! This …. Hell can not be her mind! A mind as beautiful and full of ideas and knowledge as her own can not possibly be so fragmented…what happened to you while I was on Kinmoku… and why did I leave you unprotected? I look down at the object in her hands… this can't be her starseed… and yet I know it is… the song it sings, though weak and disjointed is the counterpart to my own.

"Ami what happened to you?" I whisper, on the verge of tears.

'…all that I am….worthless…'

"Ami, stop it! Do you hear me? Stop saying these things! Look at me!"

Yet her gaze seemed to be looking through me now, instead of at me. I half turn to see what is occupying her attention, and I gasp at what I find. I see a younger version of Ami, of my Mizuno-kun, hiding under a bed, the trembling child no more than five or so. I hear pieces of conversation…no it is an argument… between… her parents? The image fast forwards quickly and I see her again only a few years older, a man dressed in a hat and trench coat is kneeling in front of her coaxing her to dry her eyes.

"_Come come now Ami-chan, dry your eyes. We're still a family, no matter what happens."_ The man reaches out and ruffles Ami's shock of blue hair and wipes her tears with his thumb.

"_Don't go Tousan!"_ The young Ami cries out, clutching her father's torso. Her father carefully removes himself from his child's embrace and casts one last glance before picking up his suit cases and walking out the nearby door.

"_Tousan!"_

I turn back to Ami after hearing her whimper at the scene, and my eyes widen as I see a cut open up on her arm and begin to bleed profusely. I hear the sounds of another image… another memory and I clutch her to me, hoping to shield her from her own mind.

"Ami don't do this, don't watch any more!"

Yet even as I beg her I can feel more blood flowing from her body from various cuts and through whatever this connection is that we have formed, I can feel each memory. Her pain from never seeing her father and only receiving the odd postcard, her loneliness in school due to her intelligence, her class, and her family history, her feelings of abandonment from her mother's work schedule, her desperation as a senshi, her need to matter… and to die at D-point. So much pain, so like my own… and she has kept it bottled up inside…and it is killing her.

I feel her struggle to move… to reach out to something and I pull back, forcing my eyes not to look at her wounded body as I turn back around… I come to quickly regret my action. The manifestation of her memories is now… none other than myself. My eyebrow flickers upward as I see myself how others see me and I realize for the first time that the walls I'd erected were too strong, too impenetrable…

My male doppelganger's eyes close deliberately and he affects a haughty air as he replies words that I've regretted for two years…

'_You are Mizuno-kun correct?...I can't regard those words as being from the same top student…Humph…can your so-called dreams and romance stop the rain?'_

I closed my eyes realizing the weight of what I said in a way that I'd never considered before…before I'd thought I was being too harsh but I know now that my transgression was far greater. I, the only person who could possibly truly understand Ami, the only one who knew what it was like to live with such burdensome intellect, had done the very thing that I, and she as it would seem, had come to loathe. I had defined her by it, stripping her of every quality as a living person, as a woman, and made her an ideal… and then I even sullied that. She'd come to forgive me I knew, and we'd grown closer, or as much as I would allow, but such a betrayal had not been forgotten.

I looked down at her shaking form and I felt pity…no, I felt understanding, she had lost everything and the one thing that had given her a sense of worth became a cage in itself. It's not something that others understand, but even then she saw her kindred spirit in me, and I'd been too foolish and too angry to realize it as well. She let out a harsh cry and I turned once again, only to see my senshi self depart this solar system as a shooting star. For the first time I could feel her pain and melancholy, the likes of which I had experienced myself and had not understood for too long…two years too long. Desperate, I turned back to her, gripping her shoulders tightly.

"Ami, Ami look at me! I'm here! I understand now, stop this! Let me in!"

Yet even as I spoke I felt her mind becoming aware of me and begin to attempt to push me out, but I knew if I left, she'd never let me close again, and this bleakness would consume her.

"Ami! Listen to me! I know what its like to lose your whole world, your whole life and think that its never going to get better. I know what its like to strive for perfection because that's the only way you can pretend that it doesn't hurt, that you don't feel anything. I know what its like to put your worth in only one thing and then wonder if that's all you are! Listen to me! Please, don't shut me out! I need you!... I… I love you…"

'No one lov-'

"Don't say that! Your friends they care about you very much!"

'They don't understand….'

"I know. But that doesn't make their love any less…"

'I am alone'

"No you're not… I'm here Ami, I understand…"

'…you left me…'

Though it's the first time she'd spoken to me directly, I feel my heart shudder in my chest. I know that she's right… but that doesn't mean that I can't be there for her now…

"I know Ami. But I'm back now… and I swear to you that I will never leave you again…"

Kinmoku doesn't even enter my mind, a fact that I should be shocked by, but I know if I lose her, if I lose my beloved Angel, not even Kinmoku will matter… Suddenly I'm terrified, terrified that she won't hear me, and I cup her blood soaked chin, angling her face upwards. I lean forward before I can change my mind and she can draw back and kiss her, licking away the blood from her lips. I slowly bring my hands to cover her own and focus my power before pressing her hands and her starseed flat against my chest, just above the swell of my breasts, where my own starseed is located.

I reach out to her with all that I am, hoping that some of it, any of it reaches her. She cries out in my mouth and tries to pull away again, but I won't let her. I won't let her retreat inside herself, and I give her all of myself. It's the oddest experience, opening my soul to her, it's comfort, both to her and myself, it's completion. Yet at the same time it's still wanting, needing always needing more of her and to my surprise, needing her to know more of myself. It's also a curiously pleasurable experience, like a thousand orgasms at once and yet I know it's only the smallest glimpse of what is to come should I stay by her side. Slowly she begins to accept me, accept my love, my forbidden love that I never thought I was capable of or even wanted to feel; not because my heart was dead, but because I knew it could destroy me.

"Take all of me…take all that you need of me, let me in, let me love you, and let that love heal…both of us…" I whisper to her mind, and I can hear my starseed echo my thoughts in song. "Too long have we denied one another…" I frown slightly at my words wondering from whence they came when I feel a bond as old at time ignite between us…no, it was always there, its just now I know what it is…

'It took you long enough….'

I break our kiss and look down at her, before I realize she had not said nor thought a word. Confused I look up and I gasp at what I see. Off in the distance behind us is Mercury, no not quite, she bears the sigil of Mercury upon her brow but she looks different, older and somehow more regal than my Ami, and yet the same.

"Who?"

'You seem to have lost some of your articulation in the centuries that we have spent apart, my love. I am Aerin of the house of Askari, the royal house of Mercury. I am glad that you finally acknowledge me, Brahma Agegis-Ti.'

"I don't…understand..."

'You do. You are just as stubborn as I remember you to be…though that is one of the qualities that I both love and despair of you. You my love, were once my closest friend outside of Serenity, and you were once betrothed to be my wife.'

This…princess… smiles at me kindly, and with a hint of gentle longing and I begin to realize what she is telling me. "She…you…" Princess Mercury smiles at me and shakes her head softly. 'I'm beginning to worry about that beautiful intellect of yours, my love. Yes. You were once mine and I yours, but death is the un-doer of all things. Queen Serenity sent us both forward and you returned to the world of your birth, only to lose it not so long after. You were lost to me, and our connection dulled.' Mercury exhaled and looked sadly at me. 'And when I found you again, pain and loss had nearly shattered your gentle and beautiful spirit, had nearly turned your passion into smoldering rage. Still you were the one I loved, the only one I could ever truly love…and losing you again both broke the shackles of my love and began to destroy me from within.

"Tell me how to help her!" I plead, noticing that Ami had yet to move in my arms, though I could feel her breath on my skin. Mercury smiled again. 'You already are helping her…helping me. She needs you, needs your love, your courage and your understanding. She needs your passion, your desire, your strength. She needs to be able to love you with out restraint and know that you will not abandon her, she needs to protect you, she needs to need you and want you and fulfill you…she needs to be the only one in your heart in this way… can you give her that? Can you give yourself to me once more? Trust your heart into my care?'

"Yes!" The answer comes without hesitation and I find my own starseed echoing those desires; I need her as well, more that I've ever needed anyone. Mercury smiles at me softly and then begins to walk away. "Wait! How do I wake her up!"

'She is already stirring and her mind is beginning to heal itself. The rest is up to her….can she accept the gift that you offer? Can she accept herself? You must stand with her but the choice must be her own… Her love for you must be her own…"

A slight moan reaches my ears, and I look down at Ami, noticing that the wounds to her body are fading and she is beginning to awaken. However before I can say anything I am once again blinded and I know that the dreamscape is over. When I return to myself she is holding me tightly, trembling in my arms, crying against my skin. She is ashamed of what I have seen, and what I stopped her from doing. I won't question her decision to kill herself, but I will be there as her support should she need me. I send my thoughts through this new rapport that we share.

"…Why?..." I feel more than hear her mumble into my skin.

"Because you called me…" I think of the nightmares that forced Princess Kakyuu to send me back to earth, and how my power was called forth, in greater strength than I had ever tapped, to protect her.

"Because I love you. And if you disappear my Angel, I want to be by your side…"

* * *

R. Niiyama 

5/28/06

This turned out to be a lot longer than I expected it to be and I guess that it may not make much sense to many, but I'm not in a habit of explaining my work…either you get it or you don't. When I first started this I was entirely ready to let Ami kill herself (shows my current state of mood) but as it progressed I wanted it to be a comfort story as much for Taiki as it was for Ami. Also I ended up in the hospital again (I really need to stop this pattern) so I am behind on work and don't know when I will work on my other stuff. Also the names for Taiki's past self and Ami's past self are from another fic I am working on...


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